


Letting Go

by strange_glow



Series: Virus Prequals [6]
Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 05:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4336343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strange_glow/pseuds/strange_glow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Schuldig walks in.  Time set: In Assassin and White Shamen, where Schwarz are in the German based Takatori building.</p><p> </p><p>Part 6  of Virus Prequals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

 

 

“That guy, he’s got a bizarre sense of humor, but he’s no fun at all,” the red head commented, slumping on the chair next to the boy who was still monitoring a laptop screen. 

 

“You’ll get used to it,” Nagi said blandly. 

 

“Oh, and how long have you worked with him?”

 

Nagi half shrugged.  “He brought me in.  He sort of kept an eye on me until I was assigned.”

 

“Well, aren’t you special,” Schuldig said.  “What’s made him so brittle?  I mean he has a sense of humor, but it’s so— _brittle_.” He gave up on trying to find any other term.   

 

“You’re the telepath, find out for yourself,” Nagi said, looking at the screen.  He was going back over CCTV recordings of a group in Tokyo that was giving them grief, compiling a report. 

 

“He’s got a mental block a mile thick, it’s all white noise, damn pre-cog.  Let me inside your little skull, I want to see what you know.”

 

“Fuck off, Schuldig,” Nagi said calmly.  “I’ll squash you like a cockroach.”

 

“You don’t know cockroaches very well, do you?” the red head said smugly.

 

“I’ve _eaten_ them,” Nagi said coldly. 

 

Schuldig made a face.  Creeepy little boy!  “Okaaaaay.  Let’s try this the reasonable human way.  Please, Naoe-san, inform me how I can make a better working connection with our glorious leader.”

 

Nagi looked at him like he’d suddenly gone mad and perhaps he should hit the panic button for the security team. 

 

“Pretty please?  I’ll buy you chocolate,” Schuldig tempted.

 

“Five bars Meiji Green Tea Cream Milk Chocolate,” Nagi said. 

 

“Done,” Schuldig held out a fist, finger side down.

 

Nagi hesitated, processed this gesture, then fist bumped him.  “Something happened to someone a few months ago; an agent he knew.  No one talks about it.”  He went back to his work.   

 

“That’s _it_?  For _five_ bars?”   

 

“What do you not understand about ‘no one talks about it’?”

 

Schuldig crossed his arms and scowled.  “Hmm.”

 

“There’s something else that you might want to know,” Nagi said in a lightly smug tone.

 

The German looked at him.

 

“He slaughtered almost half of his graduating class in Terminals week. The survivors are the elite squads, and very competitive.  Work with Crawford, and you’re wearing a target on your back.  I wouldn’t go poking around if I were you.”

 

*              *              *

 

“Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia,” Schuldig cooed into the phone.  “The little birds sing your name each morning the sun shines.”

 

“Oh god, what the hell do _you_ want?” she said.

 

“Are you not happy to hear from your little humpy bunny?”

 

“How drunk was I?” she stated.

 

“Is that any way to talk to adorable little me?”

 

“ _Fuck off,_ Schuldig.”

 

“Don’t hang up!” he yelled into the phone.  “Brad Crawford!  You were in his class!”

 

There was silence for a long moment.  He checked his screen, but the call was still connected.  “Sylvia?”

 

“Yes, I was in his class.”

 

“And you’re still alive?  I hear he went through the place like a Panzer on PCP.  Why have they got him counting beans?”

 

“I didn’t exactly escape unharmed,” she said dully.  “What is going on?  Why are you asking about him?” she demanded suddenly.

 

“I’m asking because I’m stuck on his team, and I…”

 

“ _Son of a bitch!”_ she hissed.  “God _damn_ it!” 

 

“What?” he said, surprised at her vehement reaction. 

 

“ ** _Go fuck yourself_!** ” she hung up on him. 

 

He frowned at his phone and then put it away. 

 

*              *              *

 

“Dr. Chéreau?”

 

The agent looked up from the microscope at his work table.  He was surrounded by an array of strange lab equipment, along with the usual complicated plumbing of beakers and tubes.  “Yes? You have a sample?”

 

“No, I was wondering if you could help me out with something else,” Schuldig said, looking around.  “What is it you do here?”

 

“Forensic Alchemy,” the stick thin, frizzy mopped Frenchman said.  He had a twitch in one eye that seemed to speed up with agitation.    

 

“Not chemistry?” Schuldig said, puzzled.

 

“No, _alchemy_.  What is it you want?” the man said coldly. 

 

“I hear you were in Brad Crawford’s class?  I was wondering….” 

 

The man gave a girly little shriek, grabbed a gun out of a drawer and started shooting at him with a badly trembling hand. 

 

Schuldig ducked and beat a hasty retreat out the door.  A body armored security team came thundering past him down the hall with a bolo net and tranq rifles. 

 

*              *              *

 

Crawford was sitting on one of the Takatori building’s balconies with a sweeping view of the Rhine.  An almost full glass of red wine sat on the little table beside his left hand.  He held his cell phone to his right ear.  He wasn’t talking, just listening.  He lowered the phone, and pressed a button, then put it to his ear again.  

 

Schuldig sidled out onto the balcony like a stray cat in new territory.  He blinked at the pensive look he saw on the man’s admittedly handsome face.  “Crawford,” he said, thinking maybe he hadn’t been noticed arriving in such a private moment.

 

Crawford drew a deep breath and turned his phone off, putting it away.  “What now, Schuldig?” he asked, picking up the wine to sip.

 

Schuldig smiled nervously, sitting down in the metal chair to his left side.  “If you are busy…?”

 

“Just get it over with,” Crawford said, not looking at him. 

 

“If you are not busy this evening—would you like to have supper somewhere?”

 

Crawford turned amber gold eyes to him that were almost obscured by the afternoon light on the glasses he wore over them.  “And why would I wish to do that?”

 

“I’m just asking.  If we are working and living together in Tokyo next month, it would be nice to get to know someone who’s going to be my partner in the field a little better.”

 

For a moment he thought once again someone was going to take out a gun and shoot at him.  Then he realized for the first time, that while he couldn’t read one little thing coming off Crawford’s brain, Crawford could _see_ everything _he_ was going to say and do in the next seconds.  He leaned on half crossed arms on the little table, “Look, we have to work together.  You’re some big secret prize package to the Elders, I get that.  I’m—well, not exactly the sanest person on Earth, you know what I am saying here?  What ever happened in Tokyo, I don’t know.  We set the bomb, the bomb went off, Fujimiya Junior survived and now I hear his sister is in the hospital, but the point was made, the investigation is dropped, Takatori is just a big hearted politician who has lost a ‘friend’ who may have been skimming profits, all is forgiven, because you know, he’s fucking dead.  So here we are.”

 

Crawford sipped his wine. 

 

“Well?” Schuldig prompted, unable to take the silence after not even a minute.

 

“You have a hard time making sense even in German, don’t you?” Crawford said.

 

“It’s difficult to focus,” Schuldig said, indicating his head.  “I hear everyone in a mile radius even when I’m blocking.”

 

Crawford set his wine down to one side and reached over to lay a hand on Schuldig’s bare forearm near the elbow.  “Is this why you keep putting your hands on me so annoyingly?”

 

The shimmer of static was like standing next to a water fountain;  the kind that go straight down a marble wall into a shallow pool, drowning out all other noise with its cool efficiency.  Schuldig frowned a little.  “Okay, so you found me out.  Normally I’m not such a touchy-feely person.”

 

Crawford kept his hand there.  He looked at it.  A shadow crossed his features again, the faint sadness drifting by, gone as it came.  He looked up again, “Take that stupid head scarf off.”

 

Schuldig hesitated, curiosity aroused, then reached up with his other hand to take his sun glasses off and set them on the table.  He hooked his thumb under the bright yellow cloth near his temple and slid it off.  He dropped it on the table and ran his fingers over his scalp through that red flame mop, fluffing it out a little to relieve the remaining sense of pressure. 

 

Crawford looked at him and the angle of his head changed, just enough to let his lenses become crystal clear.  “Your eyes, they’re Tiffany blue.  That bright yellow scarf draws attention away from them.  You do it on purpose.  Why not just wear contacts?” 

 

“I can’t stand them,” Schuldig said.   “It’s hard enough to focus without things in my eyes driving me nuts.” The hand on his arm remained light and neutral, just there.  He felt like he was being interrogated, that if he made one wrong answer, something would go very wrong, but it was also so intimate, being able to pay attention only to this man without interruption from anyone else. 

 

The sun shifted to that mid afternoon angle that washes everything in its path with gold for an hour at certain times of the year.  Schuldig’s hair blazed copper flames, his skin gilded, the freckles across his cheeks and nose turned to flecks of gold leaf, and the brilliant jewel color of his eyes stood out even more.  The light picked out every long lash framing them, enhancing the shadows that made them look even longer. 

 

Crawford closed his eyes for a moment, remembering sparkling green eyes, a smile like heaven…. 

 

When he opened his eyes again, they were darker, more alive in color.  His hand flexed on Schuldig’s bare skin, the rounded muscles under it firm and enticing.  He slid his hand down along that arm and his thumb under the younger man’s palm, then lifted his hand up to hold it in his, thumb pressed in the center of nerves there in the palm.  “This getting to know each other, how far does this go?”

 

Schuldig pinkened, but he also smiled.  “Oh, so that’s how it is.”

 

Crawford smiled a little.  “Yes, that’s how it is.”

 

Schuldig drew a breath and the tension he carried almost all the time fell from his shoulders like a half worn jacket sliding off.  He leaned just a bit closer, a bit more comfortable in his own skin.  “The Elders, they’ll wring my little neck—but I’ve always wanted to try.” He thought once more how perfectly handsome this guy was, with his heart shaped face and dangerous eyes, and those broad shoulders.  

 

Crawford drew the younger man’s hand to his lips and lightly kissed each finger tip, and then the thumb tip. 

 

Schuldig felt flames run down every line of his body, the moments suspended, then dripping in time with each kiss. 

 

                *              *              *

 

Brad lay in the darkened bedroom of the flat he had lived in for seven months now.  Every now and then the swish of a car in the street below broke the true silence.  But in his mind’s ear, he heard a fading memory over yet again.  _“Why do you never answer your damned phone?”_

 

He turned to tighten his arms around the telepath and held him close, his face pressed into the skin of his neck and shoulder, drawing in a stranger’s scent.  It wasn’t the same.  Somewhere inside, he’d hoped it would be.  That the push and pull of a lover’s dance would be the same; but the steps were off, and the cherished pleasure of familiar kisses and caresses never came, only an awkward mockery, satisfactory only in the completion of the act.  And ‘act’ it was, for now.    

 

He sighed and freed one hand to stroke long copper red hair, letting it fall through his fingers, remembering the brilliance of that moment this afternoon, remembering trying to convince himself that _this would do._  He felt like his heart would stop beating from the pain.   _‘I’m sorry, Yuuji.’_

The only thing he could do now, the only reason to live, was to burn everything, destroy everything, to bring down Esset and make them pay.  If he could have kept Yuuji close—. 

 

He ran his hand down the slender arm.  This one would do.  He would keep this one safe.   

 

He half turned to pick up his phone off the bedside table and pressed redial and punched in his code number.  The computerized female voice ran through the menu.  “….to delete saved messages, press 9…”

 

He pressed 9.

 

 

 


End file.
